About Us

Driven By Scientific Truth

Riffyn was founded in 2014 with the belief, borne of decades of experience, that there was a better way to approach scientific workflows and data. The approach was deceptively simple – make the processes of R&D tangible, transparent, and accessible to the scientists who operate them. With improved transparency comes better data, better decisions, better science, and a better world.

Our Foundations

We create sustainable solutions, not transactions

We are a partner and an educator, not a vendor

We do what is right, not what is easy

For ourselves, our stakeholders, our community, our society

We seek truth, learning, and improvement

We act with urgency and commitment

Our Leadership

Timothy Gardner, PhD

CEO

Timothy Gardner, PhD

Timothy Gardner, Riffyn’s Founder and CEO, is a scientist who pioneered the field of synthetic biology. He was previously Vice President of R&D at Amyris, where he led the engineering of yeast strain and process technology for bio-manufacturing of renewable chemicals. Tim has been recognized for his pioneering work by Scientific American, the New Scientist, Nature, Technology Review, and the New York Times. He also serves as an advisor to the European Union Scientific Committees, Imperial College London, and the Boston University Engineering Alumni Advisory Board. He holds a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University.

Loren Perelman, PhD

VP of Science

Loren Perelman, PhD

Loren is Vice President of Scientific Solutions at Riffyn, focused on providing customers
with the best experience they can have in implementation, training, and utilization of
Riffyn Nexus. Prior to Riffyn, he was Director of Quality, Analytics, and Manufacturing at
Bolt Threads. He also worked as a Senior Scientist at Amyris in Quality and Analytical
Chemistry, and as a Scientist at Nitto Denko Technical Corporation where he led
Analytical Chemistry within the pharmaceutical CMC group. Loren has a PhD. in
Materials Science from the University of California, San Diego, and a Bachelors is in
Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College.

Lili Nader, ME

CTO

Lili Nader, ME

Lili Nader is Riffyn’s CTO, responsible for product architecture, system architecture and scalable cloud infrastructure. Previously, Lili served as a software architect at Red Hat and Makara (acquired by Red Hat). At Red Hat she developed Openshift – a platform as a service (PaaS) providing high availability web application monitoring and management. At Makara, she built a container system for scalable lifecycle management, performance monitoring, and clustered deployment of web applications. Prior to Makara, Lili worked at Timestock (sold to Wiley Technology), OnDemand (sold to Chordiant Software), and National Semiconductor. Lili has a Masters in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Salford and a Bachelors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

Jean-Claude Calegari, MBA

VP of Finance & Operations

Jean-Claude Calegari, MBA

Jean-Claude is Vice President of Finance and Operations at Riffyn. Previously, Jean-Claude was the VP of Finance at Womply, a 160 person SAAS financial technology company that served small and medium sized businesses. Prior to that, he headed supply chain operations at Amyris, where he built the company’s contract manufacturing footprint in the US and Europe, managed global supply chain operations, and led strategic planning and M&A due diligence. He is also the Founder and co-owner of Skuut, the leading balance bike company for kids ages 3 to 5. Jean-Claude holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, a Bachelors in Sociology from Harvard University, and is a CPA.

Alan Hanley, MBA

VP of Product

Alan Hanley, MBA

Alan is the Vice President of Product Development, responsible for the design and development of Riffyn’s SaaS products. He has more than a decade of experience as a senior software architect, engineer, and as a business development expert in the digital pathology domain. As the Chief Software Architect for Slidepath, Alan was integral in developing the technology portfolio that was subsequently sold to Genetix, a Danaher company. Alan founded Pixcelldata, and, as the CEO, was instrumental in the technical and commercial development of the company and its digital pathology software solutions. Alan has a Bachelors in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin, a Masters in Bioinformatics from Dublin City University, and an MBA from MIT where he was a Sloan Fellow.

Jan Schiffman

VP of Engineering

Jan Schiffman

Jan Schiffman is the VP of Engineering at Riffyn. Jan has spent his career leading engineering and technology teams at both startups and established enterprise software firms, focused on advanced analytics, business intelligence, real time market data and trading systems. In addition to the US, Jan has lived and worked in both the UK and Japan and most recently he served as VP of Engineering for TIBCO Data Science, based in San Francisco. Jan studied Computer Science at Rutgers University and when he’s not in front of a computer, you can find him behind a drum kit.